I am sitting here at work in complete shock and can't even think about work, even though I have a pile of it sitting on my desk. The really bad thing is that I am in shock over something that I knew was inevitable one day. I was just talking to my grandpa about Thanksgiving dinner and he informed me that my cousin A would be there and that he thought we should know something before we got there... A is pregnant....
I guess a bit of background on A would be appropriate here for anyone who may stumble upon this...
She is my cousin who I would define as the "blacksheep" of the family. It was not this way until a couple years ago. Half way through her senior year of HS, she ran off to live with her 'boyfriend' whom no one had met. Rather than living with him and not be married, they ran off the court house and got married. Mind you she is 18 and still supposed to be in school. Well, she finally ends up moving back in with her parents and finishes school. She moves back in with her now husband to only have him kick her out a few weeks later. She moves back home, and then joins the Army. She is at bootcamp for I think a total of 2 weeks before they send her home because she is not adjusting. She then proceeds to move in with a guy, J, who she met while she was enlisting. She is still married to the previous guy and this new guy is married with a baby on the way. At one point she moves in with the grandparents and they attempt to help her get her life straightened out.... she can't hold a job and she ends up back with J. In all this there are some extenuating medical issues etc which I will not delve into here. In the meantime, as far as I know, she is still legally married to the first guy (they can't afford a divorce because neither of them can hold a job for any amount of time). J had attempted to enlist in the Army only to be turned down because he had a pending felony check fraud charge. So now she is pregnant...
I knew this would happen and I would always think about how I would handle this and here it is and I don't know what to say. I know a lot of things I want to say but I know they are inappropriate and unnecessary. However, all I can think is how is she shouldn't have a baby because she can't even take care of herself let alone a child. That is what keeps going through my mind, not, how can I reach out to her and try to help her (whether she would accept or not), which, I know, is how I should handle this situation. I am sick to my stomach over this and I am not sure what aspect of this bothers me more. Is it the fact that the lifestyle she has chosen is not the ideal situation to raise a child in and in my line of work, I have seen many situations like this where a child is living, and it all manifests itself in a negative situation for the child? Is it the fact that since all these things with her blew up, she has been unwilling to accept a true offer of assistance to get her life in order, and follow through on it, from ANYONE? Is it the fact that I have not been able to forgive her for the way she has treated our family with such disregard, regardless of all the hurt and worry she has put us through over the last few years (whether she asks for forgiveness or not, I know that the right thing is for me to forgive her anyway and I have been struggling with this for some time. It is a battle I fight frequently, I trust (too) easily and then when someone betrays that trust, I have a hard time forgiving and trusting again)? Or is there a bit of jealousy there on my part, she is just 21, and is going to be a parent, something which I personally doubt she is prepared for emotionally or financially and then there is me, about to turn 28 in a couple months, and ALL I have EVER wanted in my life is to be a mom (the fact that I have not accomplished the one thing I want in my life is something that I have been dealing with and considering for about a year now. I am actually seriously considering adopting in a few years if I am still single and childless by then, but I think this news has just "rubbed it in" (for the lack of a better term)? I am leaning toward the latter two facts, and I think that I am having a hard time dealing with the fact that these are my issues that I need to deal with, not something that I can blame on her. I can lay blame no where but on myself which makes it that much more difficult to deal with.
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